Portable digital storage devices are becoming increasing popular. These devices include solid-state storage such as flash memories and traditional hard disks. This popularity extends to the leading flash media, such as CompactFlash, Secure Digital Card, Memory Stick PRO, MultiMediaCard, Flash Drives, and their electrical variants. These devices can easily store gigabytes of data, weigh a few ounces, and be no bigger than a credit card. The problem with these devices is they are easily lost. Many people today carry large amounts of vital data on devices, which they keep in their pockets. It is very important that this data be encrypted to ensure that only the owner can read it.
There are many encryption schemes, but the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is quickly being adopted as the industry standard.
What is clearly needed is a system and a method to use the AES, or comparable encryption schemes, to secure the data on portable digital storage devices, with minimal impact on the speed of reading and writing to and from the device, and with minimal additional hardware expense.